In this episode Alex and Kai have a special guest – Pascal Precht (find him here on Twitter), who is a front end engineer and trainer and has long history with building sophisticated web applications. The three discuss in depth about the state of Progressive Web Apps, what they are capable of and what they still lack. Listening to this episode you get a nice overview of the topic and an idea, why this will matter to you in the future.

Progressive Web Apps Link List

General information in Progressive Web Apps on Google Developer – https://goo.gl/3tCLRI

General overview of Progressive Web Apps – https://goo.gl/6jfiqT

A Beginners Guide To Progressive Web Apps – https://goo.gl/phAQFC

Progressive Web Apps Pros and Cons – https://goo.gl/DW6tfr

Examples of Progressive Web Apps – https://pwa.rocks/

Checklist for Progressive Web Apps on Google Developer – https://goo.gl/dUY73Y

Tutorial for writing your first Progressive Web App –

In this weeks episode Alex and Kai take a deep dive into amazons latest viral news: amazon go. They look behind the curtain and discuss the technology behind it plus the impact it may has on the retail industry.

amazon go

amazons project website – http://amazon.com/go

Amazon Go – A 3D Approach To Create Great Customer Experiences – https://goo.gl/SO9eLN

Amazon just opened a grocery store without a checkout line – https://goo.gl/asfU3U

Amazon Go Will Not Kill Retail As We Know It – https://goo.gl/KA6woL

Amazon won’t shake up your neighborhood store anytime soon – https://goo.gl/Y7xXkn

Will Amazon Go replace jobs? ‘I don’t think we can stop it,’ author says – https://goo.gl/MHIk2S

In this weeks episode Alex and Kai talk about the new delivery world for ecommerce – drones and droids. As the first companies are going into real world test runs, these options become more and more interesting for merchants. We take a deep dive and discuss what’s happening right now and how the future might look like.

Drones vs. Droids

Droids Not Drones Are the Future of E-Commerce Deliveries – http://goo.gl/2UESKv

Domino’s is now testing a drone delivery program that drops pizza from the heavens – http://goo.gl/4c7gCN

Domino’s introduces ‘Dom the Pizza Bot’ for Facebook Messenger – https://goo.gl/GBb0Ub

Amazon plans to start Drone Deliveries within 5 years “Somewhere in the World” – https://goo.gl/cQe3pi

Why We’re Still a Long Way Away From Drone Delivery for E-Commerce – https://goo.gl/CJJdl4

The Economics of Drone Delivery – http://goo.gl/WGBMhZ

See the Flirtey Drone in action – http://flirtey.com/#demo

In this weeks episode Alex and Kai talk about the Pokemon Go craziness and the implication it can have for retail owners and ecommerce. Also we make a short recap of Amazon’s Prime Day. The third topic is Sephora and it’s Pocket Contour Class.

Pokemon Go

Will Pokémon GO become a marketing platform for local businesses? – https://goo.gl/XpWL5I

Nintendo Shares Surge on Pokemon Go Juggernaut – http://goo.gl/sEv58Q

Retailers Scramble to Use Pokémon Go As Their Next Marketing Tool – http://goo.gl/G8gO3t

Why Retail-Minded Marketers Are Intrigued by Pokemon Go’s Forthcoming Ads – http://goo.gl/4kpXc2

Can Pokémon Go help brands catch consumers via sponsored locations? – http://goo.gl/PWHptd

Amazon’s Prime Day

Prime Day 2016 was Amazon’s biggest day ever – https://goo.gl/umjzwV

Amazon is using Prime Day discounts to entice Prime members to try newer Amazon services – https://goo.gl/Lf853h

Amazon Prime Day’s record sales pretty much guaranteed Prime Day 2017 – http://goo.gl/SaLxHG

Amazon Prime Day’s mobile…

In this weeks episode Alex and Kai talk about the Brexit (aka the UK leaves the European Union) and the impact that can have on the ecommerce world. Also Oaklab made it to the news – the company behind the Magic Mirror from Rebecca Minkoff and Ralph Lauren flagship stores. And finally we discuss if the self checkout approach of Zara is likely to be successful.

Brexit and ecommerce

What would Brexit mean for the UK’s ecommerce economy? – http://goo.gl/527tFF

Brexit’s Implications for the Digital Economy – https://goo.gl/eazWVn

Wie der Brexit den Onlinehandel gefährdet – http://goo.gl/NOK6mk (German)

Schockstarre oder Chance? Der E-Commerce nach dem Brexit – http://goo.gl/v0IEan (German)

OAK Labs Magic Mirror @ Rebecca Minkoff and Ralph Lauren

Inside LA’s new, futuristic store — magic mirrors included – http://goo.gl/WFz7xv

Rebecca Minkoff’s Store Of The Future Will Blow Your Mind – http://goo.gl/rajH4o

Ralph Lauren, Oak Labs Debut Interactive Fitting Rooms – http://goo.gl/np6qwn

Chatbots are around for quite some time now

Even though it seems like chatbots are a new topic because they recently flood the news, they are around for quite some time now. The first chatbot was presented by Joseph Weizenbaum back in 1966. It was named ELIZA and was meant to show how computers and humans can communicate. It could simulate a dialogue with a psychotherapist, which it did by comparing the user input with its thesaurus, searching for a matching word and putting this in a preconstructed phrase. In this way it was already able to convince the users that it could understand their problems. However Weizenbaum did not claim that the system was in any way intelligent. Weizenbaums research goes back to the famous article by Alan Turing about “Computing Machinery and Intelligence“. But even if we don’t go back in time that far chatbots are not…

In this episode Alex & Kai talk more about the the actual development of the payment landscape, especially Apple Pay in the web and Samsungs further rollout. The automation of retail and logistics is another interesting topic, as well as we discuss the possible death of the app (as we know it).

More on Payment

Apple Pay Is Coming to All Shopify Stores This Fall – https://goo.gl/zJCQdu

Shopify leads slew of retail partners implementing Apple Pay for Web – http://goo.gl/Vrsj3B

Apple takes on PayPal with Apple Pay on the web – https://goo.gl/94RVKl

Samsung Pay launches in Australia to take on “tap-and-go” credit cards – https://goo.gl/ZeKIrq

Facebook ups its ecommerce game by trialing payments for Pages – http://goo.gl/538O3b

PayPal advances mobile checkout convenience new One Touch log-in requirements – http://goo.gl/ZwrlbN

Retail Automation

Should Retail Brace For Workforce Automation? – http://goo.gl/nSPUkG

Wal-Mart’s drone at a distribution center highlights efficiency – https://goo.gl/DwrjZT

Are Robots Better…